150 years ago on January 26, 1865, Anson Croman was promoted to corporal.

He served in Company F, 20th Michigan Infantry Regiment, Second Brigade, First Division, IX Corps, Army of the Potomac. At that time the 20th Michigan was part of the Union siege of Petersburg near Battery Nine just south of the the Appomattox River on the northeast edge of the city.

Felix said that the Army doctors told him that they might need to amputate part of all of his hands and feet.

However, night after night, after the American doctors had gone, a captured German doctor working in the American hospital massaged Felix’s hands and feet with a special salve.

Eventually Felix healed enough to avoid amputations and return to be reassigned to the 45th Signal Company.

A captured American soldier with “frozen feet” reported that from German medical supplies, the German guard gave him “something that looked like axle grease…which we rubbed on our feet.” (From Alex Kershaw in The Longest Winter, Da Capo Press, 2004, page 168.) Could this be the special salve Felix described that the German POW doctor used?

Medic treating GI with trench foot and cold injuries to his hands and face. This illustrates what Felix might have suffered and the treatment with a salve.

Corporal Ray Davidson of Company A reports that the 3110th worked from a building near the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

They were first housed in a hotel near the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Their hotel had electricity only a few minutes per day and no hot water.

June, 2014:

Seventy years later. Felix’s son Leonard on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées near where Felix served.

Since the exact building that the 3110th used may are not known, I decided that the best I could do was to stand under a sign on the Avenue.

Photo by Cheryl A. Robinson

Later the 3110th moved to a school near a race track. Hotels near the Avenue des Champs-Élysées were needed for combat troops on leave.

Corporal Davidson reported that the public transportation system was not working and bicycles were the main means of transportation.

Goods were scarce.

Sidewalks cafes were open but not night clubs or movies theatres. A couple of theatres were showing news reels.

He reports that after they first arrived they had to wait in long lines for their meals and the meals were initially “skimpy”. Their meals improved when the battalion was assigned a restaurant with French cooks.

The WWII Letters of Ray Davidson were compiled by his nephew Charles N. Davidson. Charles privately published them for his family and families of the 3110th.

Another post in an ongoing series about our trip to France for the the memorial in Tamerville, part of the observance of the 70th anniversary of the Liberation of France.

My late father Felix A. Cizewski served in Company C, 3110th Signal Service Battalion in Tamerville, Cherbourg, Paris providing communications and logistical support for the liberation of Normandy in 1944.

70 years ago on July 25, 1944 Company C, 3110th Signal Service Battalion landed on Utah Beach. Among them was Private Felix A. Cizewski, my late father.

The monument to the landing of the 2nd French Armored Division six days later on August 1, 1944 marks the spot where Company C landed.

June 1, 2014: Leonard H Cizewski at the northern end of Utah Beach at the monument where the 2nd French Armor Division landed on August 1, 1944. My late father in Company C, 3110th Signal Service Battalion, landed near this site six days earlier on July 25.
Photo by Cheryl A. Robinson (Felix’s daughter-in-law and Leonard’s wife)

From Utah Beach Company C proceed to Transit Area B at Focarville then to Tamerville.

A map (below) at Le Musée d’Utah Beach detailed how Utah Beach was used for troop deployment such as Company C.

Plan of Activities at Utah Beach, June 6 to November 4, 1944.

Orange circle: Transit Area B in Focarville from where Co. C proceeded to Tamerville.

PhotosNormandie identifies this as outside of the orangery on the grounds of Château de Chiffrevast.(An orangery or orangerie was a building in the grounds of fashionable residences from the 17th to the 19th centuries and given a classicising architectural form. The orangery was similar to a greenhouse or conservatory. The name reflects the original use of the building as a place where citrus trees were often wintered in tubs under cover, surviving through harsh frosts. -Wikipedia)

Another in an ongoing series about our trip to France for the 70th anniversary of D-Day and the Liberation of France and the memorial in Tamerville. Tamerville is among the places where my late father Felix A. Cizewski, served in Company C, 3110th Signal Service Battalion.